Morning Mayhem

Cameron requested pancakes for breakfast, but I was nearly out of pancake mix and didn't have time to whip any up from scratch (plus, it doesn't say "Martha Stewart" on my driver's license). So he had a huge and prolonged three-year-old fit, which provided the perfect soundtrack (← total sarcasm) for a chaotic morning.

I couldn't find my phone for the longest, then realized it was inside my pillowcase.

I walked around for like ten minutes with the torn-out page of a dinosaur book inexplicably stuck to my bare foot.

I found a mysterious dried turd on the bedroom floor. I found a shriveled carrot in the junk drawer (where coincidentally, just the other day, I also found half an unpeeled banana inside a Dollar General bag). But I couldn't find the mate to Coby's shoe. Or his other sock. Which would have been perfect ... had I been trying to dress a one-legged child. Ironically, though, I was able to easily locate his flip-flops, which spent half the summer lost. Go figure.

While sifting through the basket full of laundry (which has been sitting there for like three days and I totally need to fold but have little to no desire to attend to) trying to find Coby's missing sock, the pleasant fabric-softener smell was suddenly replaced by ... what the ... is that pee I smell?

Yes. Apparently so. My expert nose detected a whiff of urine ... on some of our "clean" clothes. How it got there remains a mystery. Who the culprit is, I have no idea. But yeah. Now I've got an extra basket of laundry to (re)wash. Oh yay.

While I was standing there staring into the laundry basket with a bewildered frown on my face, Cameron bumped his mouth trying to climb on the kitchen counter (even though he was supposed to be sitting there like a good boy eating his cereal) and busted his lip.  Like, dripping-with-blood busted.  So I had to attend to that, with kisses and soothing words and an ice cube wrapped in a paper towel.

And all the while the clock is like, "Tick-tock, chump, you've got to be out the door in less than fifteen minutes and you've still got three half-naked kids and piss-reeking laundry. Bwahahahahaaaa!"

I finally managed to get everyone fed and dressed. I made sure everything was in Colin's backpack and that he had his jacket. I made sure the dogs were confined to the living room so we wouldn't find a toy or a book chewed up (or another mysterious turd) when we got home. I cleared the breakfast dishes so that my sensitive-stomached-but-stupid cat wouldn't lick them and barf all over the place. I made sure to grab my phone in case I had car trouble or some other disaster on the way to school.

We were out the door. On time, even.

And then, halfway to school? I realized I was braless. And wearing workout pants that, after one washing, shrunk to highwaters of epic proportions - like, I'm talking mid-calf. Thank goodness Colin is able to get himself out of the car and all I've got to do is pull up at the curb. Yikes.

At least I didn't have car trouble.